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Comment by afinlayson | Hacker News Reader

It'd be nice if there was a platform that was specifically designed for People, not bots / propagandist. Corporations should need to pay to be identified as such, and we should know when a person vs a corporation says something. Does this exist... not that I've seen. Vanity metrics like number of users have become real metrics for valuation... until that's broken we can't have these discussions. But my biggest problem with Twitter is it's easily manipulated. Small groups of people can pretend to be large groups by making a small topic tend.

We act like likes are votes, but anyone can create multiple accounts .... Imagine if we did democracy this way ....

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The way the Internet is built, it's very difficult (maybe impossible) to ever tell if a client app is being operated by a human or a bot. There are various ways to make automation harder, and there are heuristics to guess if the operator might be a bot, but neither are absolute.

The best we can build today is an environment that "feels" like everyone is human but where we don't actually know and where that's almost certainly not true. (Think about Snapchat's "no screenshot implementation" as a real-world parallel.) The only bots on the platform would be the most nefarious actors who are willing to invest in the arms race.

Any platform that solves this problem will have to take a different approach - probably assuming there are bots and then providing tools to allow humans to only interact with other humans they can reasonably trust.

You have a very "positive/optimistic" outlook on how this would go down;

My immediate thought was that an implementation of this platform would be using legal identification to prove humans, allowing for one a huge depository of highly-accurate personally identifying information; a security and privacy nightmare in my opinion.

This already happens in many places, but those are regulated companies, banks etc, I couldn't imagine a social platform holding the crown jewels like this ever not being a disaster.

You don't have to have the social networking site handle the privacy information. You could integrate eId as identity providers and for a site like Twitter only provide guarantee that this is a human and this identity is unique for this human on this service.

You wouldn't be anonymous but you could be anonymous towards everyone but the identity providers.

Good point, I had totally forgotten about identity providers. I've only had to use one, which I totally disagree with; I can't remember which one, but some government site here in the UK required an IDP and the options were things like the "Post Office"; Not the sort of organisation I want to be trusting with my identity/login for any government site.

That’s not completely true; you would be anonymous towards everyone but the identity providers and any government or organization powerful enough to wield influence over the identity providers. Which completely defeats the most important reason people choose to remain anonymous.

Ah, yeah I implicitly meant that the identity providers basically have to be government owned so yes.

I don't really see a way around this if the aim is to prove human-ness though.

Right, but the identity providers being government owned exacerbates the problem I'm talking about.

I don't personally care if Joe the random person has access to an anonymous account*, but I do care if Joe the Russian dissident—whose entire ability to safely post points of view which disagree with his government relies upon it—has access to an anonymous account.

* I am not saying there aren't other valid reasons, including entertainment reasons, to have an anonymous account. But those aren't part of my main point

The only thing legal identification proves is that a human created the account. It does not prove that a human is posting or reading/scraping content.

And even then, what does a photo of ID from some foreign country prove? That the person signing up had something that looked like legit ID? Or do we start building a global database of IDs of every human that is "government approved" and somehow not subject to corruption in certain countries?

> The way the Internet is built, it's very difficult (maybe impossible) to ever tell if a client app is being operated by a human or a bot.

Indeed, I'm leaning towards it's not possible:

- Even if you required government id, you'd get a market of people selling their unused accounts, or access to them.

- You can use end-to-end DRM, like iMessage, to rate limit and complicate access to accounts, but it prevents access to legitimate actors.

- Even if you magically solve it, it still prevents legitimate bot access, such as those that keep track of when Elon musks private jet is being used.

The older I get, the more I think we're all just holding it wrong. Like the war on drugs, you can't just hunt down the bad actors. Instead, social networks simply become what they incentivize. If you make "followers" and "influence" your inofficial currency, the spam and impersonation isn't exactly a mystery. In fact, I'm pretty sure that engagement optimization contributes to making spam much worse (think clickbait).

I don't think our current generation of social networks was designed with a solid understanding of game theory. Or perhaps it was, but the important findings were ignored because it tends to interfere with growth.

> If you make "followers" and "influence" your inofficial currency, the spam and impersonation isn't exactly a mystery.

How would that translate to, e.g., email where spam and impersonation is a huge decades-long problem but there's no "followers" or "influence" to be gamed?

> to only interact with other humans they can reasonably trust.

Remember when key exchange parties were supposed to be a thing ad we would build a network of trust and so on?

Isn't that the original Facebook? When FB started everyone used their real name there which was unprecedented.

> It'd be nice if there was a platform that was specifically designed for People, not bots / propagandist.

I don't know how you can say this, when they were/are one of the main drivers? Did anyone ban Hillary Clinton from speaking? No. But, nevermind characters such as Alex Jones etc, they banned the sitting president from speaking on their platform!

Whatever your political position, I find it amazing that banning opinions that you disagree with seems to be acceptable or even desired. It used to be that people would say: I don't agree with you, but I'll fight for your right to say what you want.

Instead, it seems everyone wants to live in a comfortable echo chamber, parroting the apparent consensus opinions. So it comes as a shock to them when someone says something different.

People should try to become a bit more resilient of diverse opinions, rather than insisting on an imagined right to fragile homogeneity.

> parroting the apparent consensus opinions

> People should try to become a bit more resilient of diverse opinions

Why is it hard to accept the "diverse opinion" that children were shot and killed at a school shooting, and that their parents were not actors trying to steal your guns from you? Does it trigger you that you didnt need to form a crew and go round and set them straight?

Here is a diverse opinion for you - not everything that happens in the world is done by crisis actors trying to force you to have interracial gay sex while taking your gun from you and giving it to an illegal immigrant.

Is it ok not to believe everything that is shown on TV?

Is it ok not to believe that the government there to help?

Can having an unpopular opinion (opinion, not an action) be hateful? Does it demand action from self-appointed custodians of morality?

Do you know the truth? Do you know the difference between right and wrong? Is it ok to act against someone who says 'wrong things'?

> opinion, not an action

Holding an opinion is not an action.

Going on twitter and banging on about your opinion is an action.

You're confused.

Expressing your opinion, even on twitter, is an act of (written, typed) speech.

Preventing someone from expressing themselves, when they have done no wrong, is an action.

An act of speech is an action.

Preventing someone from expressing themselves is an action.

To clarify, I mean an action against another person.

This is as per the golden rule, do no harm. If you speak, you are doing no harm. If you prevent someone speaking, you are.

the use of propaganda, which is effective, trivially invalidates your statement asserting that speech can do no harm.

But who is propagandising who?

Who has the truth? Is it the government and the media, or are they the worst of the worst? How would you know what the truth is? Is the truth a consensus, or can everyone be wrong? In this technological age, it is easy to conceive how a false message can be disseminated widely. How can you discern truth from reality?

In the absence of certainty, you have to allow the free flow of information. You might think that people are screening/filtering information for you, but it is surely evident that they can also be doing this for their own benefit?

Information is power, as it drives your beliefs, and then your actions.

Trump and friends were attempting to weaponize social media, and they were successful. They were causing harm in the real world. That’s why they were banned.

That's your opinion. And I'd argue that you can have it. I'd argue for your right to say what you like, even though I disagree.

In reverse, can you see how for others, the weaponisation has already occurred, and that they (trump etc) are already feeling the sharp end? Actions were taken to ban them after all.

Btw, I don't vote or care about the political charade at all, I'm not red or blue. My point is that if it is acceptable that the mainstream media marginalises certain voices and you don't complain when your side is winning, you are actually legitimising the loss of freedom of speech. And, in the end, everyone is a loser of we are unable to speak freely.

Not everything is just an opinion.

Thinking that everything is, is a symptom of consuming certain types of agitprop.

> Instead, it seems everyone wants to live in a comfortable echo chamber, parroting the apparent consensus opinions

Isn’t exactly this happening on the other side of the fence as well?

Absolutely.

But I don't see them banning anyone from speaking.

The idea is that people are able to say whatever they like. Their unpopular opinion may enlighten you to some salient information that you were unaware of.

Banning, imprisonment, fines, etc, should be reserved for actions. Speaking your mind should be free. Even on privately owned platforms.

> But I don't see them banning anyone from speaking.

[1] disagrees. [2] disagrees. [3] disagrees. etc.etc.

[1] https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/heres-the-long-list-o...

[2] https://jezebel.com/republicans-are-trying-to-ban-speech-abo...

[3] https://truthout.org/articles/gops-banning-of-books-and-atta...

Wanting to ban something is different to actually banning people from speaking.

But, no doubt, there are republicans who would do this too. I would say the exact same thing to them, as and when they start actually banning something or someone.

Freedom of speech is not a political position; try not to drag me into the gutter, please!

You have to ban hate propagandists or you get people attacking the husband of a senior politician with a hammer, based on whatever weird combination of conspiracy garbage they participated in.

I was genuinely surprised the Brazilian election went as well as it did: there were reports of pre-election violence, but once all the votes were counted the losing candidate just conceded properly.

But America won't see or understand how terrorism works in the 2020s until it has another 9/11. At which point it will conduct reprisals against the wrong targets again.

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